Russia

Amidst worldwide condemnation, Russia’s parliament passed a law outlawing “homosexual propaganda.”
It was definitely a shameful milestone.
As of today,
The law will make it an offence…to communicate to Russian children and young people that love between two women or two men is “just as socially valuable” …

As a Russian who first came to America as a small child and later spent his university years in Cambridge, Mass., I felt particularly gripped by the ongoing Boston bomber saga. There remain so many questions about why these two brothers, to whom the U.S. had given shelter, passports, schooling …

He was the original oligarch: a talented mathematician who had used his smarts and ruthlessness to amass an enormous fortune in the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Eventually, he became one of Russia’s most powerful men, a courtier to former president Boris Yeltsin.
Boris Berezovsky went on to survive assassination attempts …

Today is 60 years since the death of Joseph Stalin. How do we know this? Well, it’s on the front page of the BBC, there’s an article in the Telegraph, Reuters, the Atlantic and pretty much everywhere else. Except Russia itself, that is, where the event hardly attracted any attention …

Is this the face of Russia’s next president?
According to a report quoted in today’s Moscow Times, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin has become the favorite to succeed Putin in 2018.
Sobyanin?
“Sobyanin is a figure who could please both the main tycoons in the …

How you usher in the new year says a lot about a country.
In the capital of capitalism, Americans huddle amidst the neon billboards of Times Square; according to wine-growing tradition, the Spanish eat a dozen grapes; Italians tuck into a stuffed pig trotter accompanied by lentils, symbols …

Heads are rolling in Moscow.
Over the past two months, two Russian ministers and the chief of the army have lost their jobs.
The October resignation of regional development minister Oleg Govorun was but a prelude to the recent high profile ousting of the reformist defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov. The latter ostensibly …

Looks like Putin’s infamous crane flight has claimed another victim.
Two months after his unauthorised sequel to Fly Away Home, which reportedly resulted in several of the endangered birds getting killed and maimed, the Russian president has mysteriously

“The more choice of different candidates there was, the better United Russia did. We’re not afraid of democracy; we need democracy”. With these words, prime minister Medvedev greeted the happy news that despite greater choice and wider opposition involvement compared to December’s parliamentary vote, …